Every virtual event can include a live chat where your viewers can comment and discuss the event amongst each other as it’s happening on your event page or on your site via the embedded chat. As the event owner, you have the ability to moderate this chat as well with comment deletion and banning capabilities.
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You must be on a desktop browser in order to use the chat moderation tools. Opening your event on the Vimeo mobile app allows you to see and participate in the chat but there are currently no options to manage the chat via the app. You will not see the live chat if you are streaming from the mobile app.
⚠️Note: There are other interactive tools you can use for your events such as polls and Q&A. Chat is best for general discussion among your viewers.
Enabling & disabling chat for live broadcasts
Chat is disabled by default. You can see this from the Events Settings page right after you create your event under the Event tab. To the right of the new event modal, you will find the toggle for Chat under Optional features. Toggle the Chat switch to enable it (it will turn blue).
After you create an event, you can find the option to enable or disable chat to the right of the player on the event settings page.
If you are streaming through your browser you will be taken to the web-based production tool. On the right side of the stream, you will see two chat options: Audience and Speakers.
Audience allows your viewers to chat during your event. You can post messages and emojis, which all your viewers can see. Click Disable chat at the bottom to turn off the audience chat.
The Speakers chat is an internal chat between you and other speakers/guests. It will be enabled at all times.
If you are watching the event from Vimeo, the chat will appear to the right of the live player.
⚠️Note: While the number of viewers an event can have is unlimited, chat is limited to 80,000 logged-in participants (either via their Vimeo account or by entering their name and clicking "Join"). If your event's chat surpassed 80,000 logged-in participants, any new viewers will not be able to access the chat as well as polls and Q&A; existing participants would still have access.
Moderating chat
Your chat will be available on your Vimeo event page and the engagement tools embed once it is enabled. This means:
- Viewers can start chatting even if you haven’t gone live yet.
- They can log in to an account or chat as a guest and post emojis and messages up to 240 characters long.
- They can also paste links in chat, these links would show up as hyperlinks and are clickable.
- Chat participants can also delete their own messages if they wish (but nobody else's).
- The chat will remain active until you finish your stream (unless you disable it).
During the course of your event, you can delete individual comments or ban a user entirely either via the Chat tab, the web-based production tool, or on your stream’s public page on Vimeo. Hover your cursor over their message and select the Trash icon to delete a comment or the Block icon to block the user.
The offending user can still comment when you block them, however, their comments will no longer be visible to any other participants so it will appear that they are being ignored by everyone else. You can also unblock the user if you wish. Please note that the blocked user is only blocked for that event; they would be able to visibly post on future events unless you were to block them again.
During your event, the browser will only display the most recent 100 messages to both you and your viewers; this is to prevent playback buffering and overall system slowdown. Note that you will still be able to export a CSV of all chat messages after your event (more on that below).
Export your chat transcript
Once your event is over, the chat will deactivate and you can download a transcript of the event’s chat. Chat transcripts are available to download for 30 days.
The steps to do this depend on the type of event you streamed.
Export chat from a live broadcast
- Go to the event management page and select the desired event.
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On the bottom-right of the page, select Export chat.
- Select either the Current session for the event you just streamed or your event’s date for a previous stream.
- This will download the transcript as a .txt file.
Export a chat from engagement tools
The easiest way to export your chat is to navigate to the full-page engagement tools link.
- Go to the event management page and select the desired event.
- Open the embed option in the upper right corner, then find Full-page engagement tools link at the bottom of the modal.
- Select Copy link.
- Open the copied link in a browser window.
Note: If your audience sees an error that states “Interactivity will appear when added to the event”, refer to this article to troubleshoot. - With the Chat icon selected, click Turn on in the middle of the page.
- At the bottom, click Export chat.